SAP has ditched the additional license fee it was charging customers of its user interface product Fiori, as pressure from its user groups finally paid off.
The German ERP giant announced it has changed its ways at its annual Orlando conference Sapphire Now, and will start to provide user interface (UI) solutions Fiori and Screen Personas as part of underlying software licenses from now on.
Previously customers with maintenance agreements for other tools had to pay more to use the products.
Fiori, released last year, delivers a variety of different SAP user transaction screens on HTML 5 to provide a simplified and intuitive design, while Screen Personas aims to make data entry easier to do via a simple interface.
UK & Ireland SAP User Group chairman, Philip Adams, welcomed the news, predicting it will lead to a surge in adoption of SAP solutions, with 300 apps currently using the Fiori UX.
"This should be a win-win for SAP and our members," he said. "Fiori should improve user satisfaction and as a result we wouldn’t be surprised to see user adoption of other SAP software increase.
"The user experience of SAP has been a complaint of members for some time. We’ve been pushing SAP on this matter as our members felt strongly that they shouldn’t have to pay separate license fees for Fiori."
A recent User Group study found that the vast majority of 200 surveyed organisations are put off Fiori by the additional license fees SAP demanded for it, but more than half of respondents said they would adopt Fiori within a year if it was free to customers with maintenance agreements.
Adams added: "There has never been any doubt about the quality of these new user experience tools and with the news today it will be much easier for us as customers to take advantage of them."
Existing customers will get a software credit redeemable against any future sales from SAP, the firm confirmed.
CEO Bill McDermott said: "Some customers and our user groups believe we shouldn’t charge for SAP Fiori. We listened to our customers, I agree with them and now SAP Fiori is included with SAP software."
Sapphire Now continues until Thursday.
